June 29, 1989
Thursday, 10:00 am

Last night I worked on paintings. I have two drawings, "Pool" and "Terra Incognita" and two paintings, "Sara/Detour" and "Fall". I hope to get all these done by mid-July and should be able to get six paintings done this summer, twenty drawings.

At 10:00 I met the others at the Paula Cooper Gallery to wheatpaste the Kostabi poster around Soho.

There was a light drizzling rain when I got to the gallery on Wooster, the first one there. Then John the decorator arrived, then Hunter Reynolds and Aldo Hernandez and finally Bill Dobbs and Neil Broome on bikes. Of course nobody brought wheatpaste so we had to call around and finally got some from Mark Harrington. It's hard to be an activist when you're naturally disorganized.

We mixed the wheatpaste and went out. Tony Feher joined us. We split into two groups, I was with John and Neil. First Spring and Prince, then down to Broadway and the schlock art store that sells Kostabi. We thought about tearing down the banner with his name on it but decided against it because it was too hard and only publicize Kostabi.

We met three people sitting on a stoop who gave us support. Then we hit a store on West Broadway that has a Kostabi on the wall. As we left that place two men looked at the posters and we were afraid they would tear them off before they were dry. Instead they walked away. I said they were gay and later, when we ran into them again, they gave us support.

We lost each other at some point but finally ran into Hunter who said Aldo went home. We couldn't find Tony, which wasn't unusual. The rain started pouring, we debated continuing uptown and decided to do it. John had a car and Neil met up with us on 39th with his bike. Someone called Dennis and told him to join us and he came with a friend just in from the airport. I don't remember the friend's name but he was tall, skinny and blond.

We all walked down 39th to Kostabi World, putting posters up along the way. The prostitutes ignored us. Dennis' friend looked worried and I told him the prostitutes wouldn't bother us, they knew we weren't customers. The friend said it was seeing them that bothered him. Sensitive soul, but he was right.

Kostabi World was next to a stable for carriage horses. We pasted the doors of his building and left a note saying he liked our "performance piece." We then walked down to his apartment building on 37th. A man in white cook's clothes sat on the stoop talking to a woman. Drug dealers cruised the street. There was a police station across the street.

I stood watch over the police station in case anyone should come out. A cop car drove by and went into the alley. When I thought I saw someone come out of the station I gave the danger signal and everyone scattered, including the drug dealers.

False alarm, just someone unloading a car in the parking garage. Some men were carrying steel pipes on the street but moved on to the other end of the block and left us alone. We went back to wheatpasting.

Hunter yelled and we scattered. An unmarked police car drove by and stopped Dennis and me. They asked us what we were doing. Dennis asked them who they were and they jumped out of the car. Dennis had his posters rolled up like some kind of weapon.

The two men from the car didn't identify themselves and demanded, again, to know what we were doing and what the poster was. Dennis started to talk back to them and I thought it was the end but then he did the smartest thing: he looked real dumb and sincere and said we were artists doing a performance piece.

The men looked at the poster, then at us and said it might be alright to do this sort of thing down in the Village but they didn't want it up here in their territory. Then they very politely explained why. "Don't do it here, especially next to a police station. Or at least do it on the other side of Ninth Avenue. If you have a vendetta that's your business but the owner of the building is going to complain to us and we don't need the hassle."

I should note that by the time the cops arrived we had already done a major job of plastering the front of the building with posters of Kostabi's face. It was a clear-cut case of vandalism on our part. Yet there is still room for vendetta even in New York. The cops sussed the situation out pretty fast and the easiest way for them to deal with it and go home. (I should also add that Dennis looks like a Marine and is, in fact, the son of a Marine. I do not look like a Marine though I tend to forget how big I am and I was probably bigger than the cops.)

The cops let us go and we found Hunter and Dennis' friend around the corner.

Hunter and I caught the A train at Port Authority and while waiting he told me about getting arrested in Florida when he was 15. An undercover cop trapped him while cruising and made him rat on a friend dealing drugs.

The train came and I got off at West 4th. Instead of waiting around for my transfer I walked the rest of the way home in the rain.